It is the greatest
visible monument to his achievement that the "Father of Waters ... goes
unvexed to the sea" [Footnote: Letter to John C. Conkling, August 25,
1863.] through one country instead of the territory of two or more nations
and that the slavery he witnessed is no more. But it is a greater monument
to him, as it is a nobler monument to those who have erected it in their
own hearts, that he is revered the length of the course of the river first
traced by La Salle, and through all the reach of the rivers of his claim
from its source, even as far as its mouth at the limitless sea.
CHAPTER XIV
THE VALLEY OF THE NEW DEMOCRACY
France evoked from the unknown the valley that may, in more than one
sense, be called the heart of America. Her coureurs de bois opened its
paths made by the buffalo and the red men to the shod feet of Europe. Her
explorers planted the watershed with slender, silent portage traces that
have multiplied into thousands of noisy streets and tied indissolubly the
lakes of the north to the rivers of the south from which they were long
ago severed by nature.
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